That’s a picture taken on yesterday morning’s walk to the office. A light snow was falling then, and it later switched to a drizzle before stopping, so there was never much accumulation. In any case, this is the Battery Park City promenade along the Hudson River. Like a lot of walkways in the city parks, it’s paved with “hexagonal asphalt pavers” You can see the outlines of the individual pavers in darker gray…and the question is why?
According to the photo’s metadata, I took it at 7:14 AM. The temperature was a few degrees below freezing, pretty much where it had been all night. So the pavers should have been right around the ambient air temperature, a little below freezing. The top of the each paver is slightly crowned, that is: high at the center and sloping off a little bit towards the edges. So the snow should be just a little bit deeper at the joints between pavers than it is at the center of a paver. And the joints should be the same temperature as the center. So why is the snow thinnest at the joints, as can be seen by the drake color, where it should be thickest?
This meaningless question is going to drive me nuts for a while.
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